Readings:
Sermon:
This Sunday we remember those who have died in war, and particularly those members of our armed forces who have died in the service of our own nation. Recent history, and the news that enters our homes every day from Gaza, Ukraine, and numerous other places, reminds us constantly of the evils and suffering associated with war, and this causes many of us to feel ambivalent about Remembrance Sunday. By remembering our war dead, do we somehow justify or even celebrate something we know to be a source of pain, suffering and horror for countless people?
In my study I have two objects which help me to reflect on this question, and to which I return at this time every year. The first is a bayonet which my great uncle Kenneth brought back with him from the Western Desert in World War Two. It is a foot-long steel knife, simple and functional, whose sole purpose is to stab into a human being and do them harm. It is a stark, brutal object, uncompromising in its function. I have known many people who are uncomfortable even to have it in their presence. The second object is the Military Medal, awarded ‘for gallantry’ to John Cantwell of the First Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment during World War One. I don’t know what John did to earn his medal, because the records have been lost. To have earned it, he had to be very brave, possibly saving the lives of others. At the same time, John almost certainly had to do something extremely frightening and possibly very violent. It’s entirely possible that his act of gallantry involved injuring or even killing other human beings in order to save others, possibly using a bayonet exactly like the one my great uncle brought home from his experience of war.
These two objects present me with a paradox, two truths which seem to contradict each other and which I cannot reconcile. War brings out the worst of us as human beings: our rage, our anger, our bitterness, our capacity for violence and reducing other people to objects in our own minds. Yet it also brings out the best in us: our courage, our willingness to put ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of others, our mercy, our bravery, our sacrifice. To honour the one is not to deny the awful reality of the other. And yet that awful reality is something we need to be reminded of, because we all carry the potential for both realities within ourselves.
Remembrance Sunday commemorates those who have died in war. For me, though, these two objects also remind me of those who did not die, and who returned home burdened by the memory of what they had witnessed, and of what they had done. I don’t know what John Cantwell did to earn his Military Medal, but I know he returned from the First World War. I wonder what memories he carried, and whether he shared them and resolved them, or whether, like so many of his generation and that of my great uncle Kenneth, he carried them within himself for the rest of his life.
In war we ask our service personnel to be willing to sacrifice their health and sometimes their lives for our sake. We also expect them to do, and to experience things, that most of us would prefer not even to think about. War is an evil, a horror, a blight on human experience. But on this Remembrance Sunday I will be thinking about John, and about Kenneth, both of whom came home, and as the Last Post sounds I will say a private and silent ‘thank you’ to them both.
Questions:
- Can you think of someone to whom you might say ‘thank you’ on this Remembrance Sunday?
- What can we do to reduce the scourge of war in our time?
- What, in the midst of so much suffering, can we see that brings us hope and the signs of God’s Kingdom of peace and justice? How can we help those shoots of hope to grow stronger?